Hi

Girls and Boys

Do you remember that on my first blog I mentioned pregnant females? So, we have given them individual paddocks and food pan from today. They will be having babies in their individual enclosures. Females seek isolation from their group towards the last trimester of their pregnancy. Pygmy hog breeds once in a year and average litter size is 4 to 5 hoglets. They will give babies from mid May to later part of June.  Babies will be with mother till they are five months old. Sometime in December we will separate the juveniles from their mother and form group of four to six individuals. Then we will take them to our Pr-release
enclosures to make them fit for release in the wild. We will house them in the pre-release enclosure without direct human contact with minimum food supply for another five to six months.

We have created a semi wild environment by simulating their habitat in pre-release enclosures. These enclosures are made with a bamboo fence. But these need to be replace every year. Nowadays bamboo is expensive , labour costs are high and it is difficult to get good bamboo near our per-release centre. So we have decided to replace this with chain link fence to make it more permanent and for that we are also looking for funding.

 

We usually release hogs into the wild from mid to late May. In that time grasses are tall enough for pygmy hogs to hide in and they cut the grasses themselves for building their own nest. Because of pre-monsoon the resources (insects, roots and tubers) in the grassland will also be plentiful and they will easily find their needs. So they will be able to adjust in the wild habitat without much difficulty before the monsoon comes in mid July.

So following this soft release process of reintroduction we have so far released 85 hogs in two different parks.

I have to stop here now. A small group of students from a local school visiting us this afternoon and I need to prepare for them.   

Write to you soon. Wish you a happy weekend.

Parag